


Sororité

by Germinal



Series: Sororité [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Corinthe, Female Characters, Gen, Minor Character(s), Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various missing scenes before, during, and after the barricade, from the perspective of Corinthe's redoubtable waitress and co.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sororité

She had not known, before taking work at Corinthe, that her place of employment shared its name with a town classically renowned for its temple prostitutes, but it is hardly a surprise when so many jokes, if mostly repetitive and obvious ones, are fashioned from such promising material. When customers are indiscreet, intimate, or bold enough to make these jokes within her earshot, she laughs, and occasionally makes them herself. When she does not feel that laughter is particularly merited, Matelote drinks until she finds herself laughing anyway.

*

She grows to learn that such experiences are universal, and not only among waitresses. Even Louison, a dishwasher of her passing acquaintance, has something to complain of when they meet in the shadows of the street behind the Musain after the welcome end of her shift. After a few moments of conversation, they end up laughing too.

‘He’s not as bad as some, that Grantaire,’ says Matelote eventually. ‘I could tell you stories.’

‘It was –’ says Louison, her thoughts still only partly in the present, ‘it was not that I objected, but only –’

‘Only that you weren’t given the option of objecting? That you might have welcomed the fellow with open… ah, open arms, shall we say – but, in fact, you weren’t given a moment’s notice to decide whether you’d reject him or accept him. Isn’t that it?’

Louison glances away, folding her arms across her chest.

‘Well, yes. Isn’t that always it?’

Matelote swigs from a wine-bottle that she might even have paid for, and fixes her companion with a mock-stern glance.

‘My dear, assume that nothing that issues from the mouth of a drunk is to be believed. It has about as much value as what goes into their mouths beforehand – and in the case of your establishment at least you’ll know how little that amounts to. This litany of lies includes their promises of marriage, and their stories of the mines in the South that their family supposedly owns, but mostly it includes how ugly they’ll tell you that you are. Pay it no mind, and pay as little mind to their hands as you do to their mouths. It’ll stand you in good stead as a waitress, as a barmaid, and as anything else you might choose to be.’ 

With a surprisingly steady hand, Matelote smoothes her skirts. ‘But really, if it happens again then you should box his ears. When he’s next in, I’ll do it for you.’

Louison smiles and extends a hand for the wine-bottle. She notes, with a confusing degree of satisfaction, that its neck still bears the imprint of the other woman’s lips.

*

When she next sees the drunkard, Matelote does not box his ears, but she does not laugh so much at his familiar antics either. 

As usual with this crowd, she half-scorns and half-admires their conversation, their Parisian fashions, ridiculous waistcoats and hats, their arguments that occupy entire afternoons and evenings, and the amount of time they have to waste in lounging or worse. Familiarity with them has bred affection along with contempt, however, and she has come to think of some of them as a family of sorts – even Louison’s terror, Grantaire, even those who drink and never pay, and even the ravishing-looking but standoffish one whom she and half the female serving staff of her acquaintance refer to, with comically exaggerated swooning gestures, simply as That Blond. 

Tonight the students’ discussion has a sharper and more urgent edge, she thinks, like something reaching fever pitch. The neighbourhood is like an unwatched cooking-pot on the verge of boiling over. There are hushed conversations in shadowed doorways, messages run between cafés, meaningful looks exchanged. Mme H is worried, even more vocally than usual, predicting chaos and disaster and a probable downturn in takings. 

Matelote shrugs, and pours the wine.

*

The day the barricades go up does not feel extraordinary at first.

Normal service at Corinthe often reminds her of the home she has not visited since Christmas, with food more or less permanently on the table, the draining of glasses and scraping of plates, the shouted greetings and demands, the arguing and banter. Today, the crowd that has poured into the space in front of the wine-shop has the same noisy, bustling intimacy, even if the gathering is more mixed than she is used to. There are knots of artisans, dock-workers, and older men among the crowd as well as students, some of them new and some of them familiar – not to say, by now, over-familiar.

If her fellow waitress Gibelotte is sleepy, methodically handing out broken paving-stones like dishes of the day, Matelote is wide awake. She clears space for the assembling of weaponry and tears up dishcloths for use as bandages with sharp efficiency, as quickly as she used to swipe the tables clean. She has not felt so useful, or so energised, in weeks.

There are still jokes being made, even now, and she feels oddly serene, unworried by the damage being done to the furnishings and exterior of the wine-shop. The place, as she tells a stupefied Mme H in an attempt at reassurance, has surely seen worse in its time.

-

When exuberant anticipation, dampened by the rain and by reality, has given way to a grim collective resolve, it becomes clear that their duties here are done. Matelote takes her cue from the carefully blank expression of the student who dispatches them downstairs, recommending that they hide since they cannot easily leave, and tries to show fewer signs of fear or panic than she feels. 

The cellar, now nearly bare, bereft as a plundered bank-vault, becomes their sanctuary. She, Gibelotte, and their employer cluster close together in a far corner. In the dark they are intimately aware of, above them, the shouts, the gunshots, the running footsteps, splintering wood and breaking glass and – very nearly worst of all – the ominous silence that falls in between. 

Somewhere in the commotion, she thinks suddenly of her pet drunkard, whom she remembers seeing last with his head on the table in the upstairs room, drunk and to all appearances dead to the world. As another round of cannon-fire resounds, seeming to rock the place to its foundations, she thinks he may have taken the most sensible approach to things. 

She reaches out to either side, her hands seeking the security of theirs.

*

It is nearly the end of June when they next pass in the Rue Saint-Denis, and Louison, seeing her face with a start, finds Matelote scarcely recognisable. She is thinner and her eyes are sunk in shadow, as though she has aged a decade in the past few weeks. On seeing Louison, the spark of recognition in her eyes renders her more like her familiar self. 

She carries an almost empty wine-bottle in one hand, and raises it to the other woman with a sardonic expression.

‘As you’d expect, there’s hardly anything left – of Corinthe, I mean, not merely of the wine. I’ve just been to visit what remains. I almost thought of pouring a libation on the ground, but –’ 

She gives a brief laugh, then shrugs and falls silent. 

‘Come with me to the Musain,’ Louison says gently. ‘I think the living have more urgent need of wine than the dead.’

Their eyes meet, and, between them, they manage a smile.


End file.
